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POP/JAZZ; A Rising Rap Star Puts Content Ahead of Style

ON the back lot of Universal Studios, hip-hop's rising star Canibus is lounging in a trailer parked in front of the clock-tower building best known from the set of the ''Back to the Future'' movies. On break from filming a video for ''How Come,'' a single he raps on from the Warren Beatty movie ''Bulworth,'' Canibus is waiting for a meeting with an executive at Dreamworks Records who wants to sign him to a publishing deal. In his back pocket is a cassette of a song that the teen-age singer and sitcom star Brandy wants him to rap on, and in his hands is a bottle of Hype, a natural energy beverage that he says he drinks to immunize himself from the hype constantly bombarding him. The drink, he says, keeps him from getting ''hype-notized'' and succumbing to ''hype-nitis,'' which occurs when you believe your own hype. It is a disease common among pop stars.

''I have cases and cases of Hype,'' Canibus said, a smirk spreading across his smooth, strong face. ''You will never catch me without one.''

Canibus, a 23-year-old from Jersey City, certainly needs the protection. He has released only one single, yet he has become one of the most talked about and respected rappers working today. Mike Tyson, in fact, was even willing to break his ban on speaking to print media to discuss Canibus.

''He's so intelligent, that's the reason I like him,'' Mr. Tyson said. ''He's fresh, he's new, and his delivery is perfect. He never makes mistakes.''

Canibus's fame comes not just from years spent building a reputation as one of the smartest, toughest and tightest rhymers on the underground or from the songs he has performed on by rappers like the Fugees, Common, the Lost Boyz and L. L. Cool J. It doesn't even come from the fact that his manager, Wyclef Jean of the Fugees, is a man much busier and more famous than he is. It is in large part because he has become embroiled in the biggest rap feud of the year. And nearly everyone in hip-hop is excited about this fight because it doesn't involve guns. It involves music.

In rap's early days, disputes and challenges were often settled in battles -- neighborhood contests of disk-jockeying or rapping prowess that took place in parks and community centers. As rap became a big business and street gangs were lured by the power and money, insults were often responded to with fists, knives or guns. But late last year, when L. L. Cool J. railed against Canibus, spending an entire verse of the song ''4,3,2,1'' calling him a cocky, talentless upstart, Canibus struck back at his former idol on wax, recording a vicious, contemptuous single with extra vocals from Mike Tyson, ''Second Round K.O.'' It shot out of the underground and into the Top 40.

Two weeks ago, L. L. Cool J. retaliated, releasing ''The Ripper Strikes Back,'' a taunting single that responds point for point to Canibus's barbs about his children, sexuality and fans. The exchange has music fans hoping that Canibus, on his debut album due in July on Group Home/Universal Records, will take hip-hop back to its more benign pre-gangsta roots in boasting and battling. But their hopes may be misplaced. Canibus has other intentions for hip-hop.

''People are interpreting me as bringing it back,'' Canibus said. ''Wrong, I'm from an entirely different era. Don't put me in a box and say I'm taking it back. I'm taking it forward! They just don't have enough to judge me on.''

Despite his confrontational, battle-hungry lyrics, Canibus's real agenda is to equate intelligence with toughness, to promote content over style and to, as he raps in one song, ''make you question any and everything you've ever believed in.'' He derived his name from that of the marijuana plant, he says, not because he advocates using the drug but because he likes to think of his lyrics as activating the mind in the way the plant does.

A self-confessed computer junkie who can't stay away from the Internet, he doesn't fit the mold of most rappers. As his producer, Jerry Wonder, said, ''I think he's from another planet.'' In Canibus's thinking-cap raps, he compares himself to Einstein instead of, say, John Gotti and talks about picking up women on line instead of in bars. Where other rappers court legitimacy by bragging about gang warefare, drug-dealing and prison sentences, Canibus proudly says he was a hermit who never went out as a child, preferring to play Atari games and live in his head instead of the streets. In a world in which rappers thank God on their albums, Canibus says he places his faith in science over religion. In fact, he spent a year at DeKalb Community College in Atlanta studying computer science though his real ambition was genetic engineering.

''I was always an antisocial person growing up,'' he explained. ''I couldn't understand a lot of things people would do and say. And no one ever understood me. I always had a hard time in school. People always laughed and made fun of me because I couldn't find my niche.''

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Born Germaine Williams to a Jamaican cricket player named Basil Williams, Canibus is a tough man with a soft heart. During the filming of the ''How Come'' video, he disappeared to buy a Nintendo 64 game console for the 10-year-old son of one of the women working on the set because, he said, the son was a thinker and a loner who reminded him of himself at that age.

Canibus emerged from his shell in the early 90's, when he made his way into the rap world on the business side, helping start Group Home, the management company that represented the Lost Boyz. His real goal, however, was to become a rapper, and he started rhyming on underground mix tapes made by DJ Clue and putting himself through a training regime that he compares to Mr. Tyson's.

''Tyson gets in the ring and knocks people out,'' Canibus said. ''I get in the mike booth and knock people out. His training process is bananas; the stuff I go through is coconuts. People think I just sit home all day and scratch myself or go to a club every night and get drunk and stoned and then write rhymes. No, practice makes perfect. I sit for hours in front of the mirror and just look at myself when I rhyme, and I say certain words and I accent certain things. I read. I exercise my mind. Input equals output. That's a fact of life.''

One of Canibus's biggest breaks came when L. L. Cool J. invited him to appear on ''4,3,2,1,'' which explains why he was so upset when he heard the final version of the song and L. L. called him a ''little boy'' and ''amateur'' and threatening, ''Blow you to pieces/ Leave you covered in feces.'' It seems that L. L. Cool J. interpreted a line Canibus rapped during the recording of the song as an insult. (The line was about tearing L. L. Cool J.'s tattoo of a microphone off his arm.) But Canibus says it wasn't intended as derogatory and that L. L. Cool J. should have been familiar with his aggressive style. L. L. Cool J. declined to be interviewed.

''DURING the six months after the record was made, it was very difficult for me,'' Canibus said. ''My life was balanced on a scale right there, and it felt like a boulder dropping on one side against a rice grain. I live in Jersey, and it was difficult for me to just walk down the street to my block and go home because people were always coming up to me and asking questions.''

When L. L. Cool J. released ''The Ripper Strikes Back,'' accusing Canibus of, among other things, being an overnight sensation thanks to the feud, Canibus says he wasn't hurt this time. He was flattered. ''I got him to respond,'' Canibus said. ''I actually got him screaming my name on a record. That's what he wanted least of all. This is cooler than it being something violent.''

Canibus compares a battle to a chess game and constantly says that he lives his life in ''if-then statements,'' meaning that before he does anything, he runs through every possible outcome in his mind. Some friends call him paranoid and, in fact, he likens himself to Mel Gibson's cabdriver character in ''Conspiracy Theory.'' He can pontificate for hours about alien intelligence, government plots and J.F.K. assassination theses and has reams of computer printouts on these subjects.

''To me everything is a conspiracy movie,'' he said. ''When I get up in the morning, automatically I'm worried about what am I doing, what are you doing, what are you thinking, what am I thinking. What you say will cause me to think one way; if you say something else, it'll cause me to think another way.''

Somehow, this man who portrays himself as an intellectual loner in conversation has become one of the rap world's most watched figures. At dinner after the video shoot, Canibus was surrounded by stars and moguls, including Mr. Beatty, members of the Fugees and Jimmy Iovine, president of Interscope Records. In the middle of the meal, Mr. Wyclef shouted to Mr. Iovine: ''Watch this kid. He's going to be big. Real big.''

From the other end of the table, Canibus's business partner boasted: ''Canibus is going to change the face of rap. There's no one like him.'' Meanwhile, Canibus just sat slumped in his seat, smirking, as he lifted a can of Hype to his lips and took a long sip.

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A version of this article appears in print on May 10, 1998, on Page 2002046 of the National edition with the headline: POP/JAZZ; A Rising Rap Star Puts Content Ahead of Style. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe